Seven
by Dyslexic Angel
Summary: I will drown my sins in you, and let you be my redemption.  Seven sins, Zemyx.  Written for livejournal challenge, and as a cure for insomnia.  DemxyXZexion pairing, nongraphic slash.


Zemyx 7 Sins

1. Greed

They don't want much. Lives again. Hearts again. Most of them would even settle for hope, but Zexion wonders why they want so fiercely, they who should not be able to feel. Greed, too, is an emotion. Were they designed to want? He wonders with idle clarity, the pristine mind with nothing to occupy it in the void of time and space. Were they designed at all, or merely unhappy accident? Zexion has never believed in God, did not believe when he was Ienzo, but wonders if the explanation could be made to fit the data. If so, he imagines, it would be a cruel god, to leave them wanting so.

He does not want much; he is not certain a heart again would solve any of his problems, so that is one thing he does not ask for. Instead he asks for the source of his fall again; he asks for knowledge, asks for understanding. He asks, and he _wants_, more passionately than ever his human self could, and wonders how it could be so.

Demyx wants an awful lot, and he knows it. He wants the superior to forget that Demyx is around, and stop giving him missions he isn't suited for. He wants another box of those delicious fruit candies from that world that isn't around any more. He wants Zexion to be happy, because he thinks he loves the other man despite how that should be impossible, and isn't love wanting someone to be happy? But most of all, he just wants to be content, to find some sort of balance. What Demyx most wants is not to want anything at all, and he thinks sadly that this is impossible.

2. Gluttony

The stuff was bitter, though not unpleasant. Under the dark, heavy taste was a hint of sweetness, a brief flash of brassy light in the opaque flavor of very dark chocolate. Demyx closes his eyes and thinks perhaps that Zexion's favorite food is not really for him, and wonders what the man sees in it, or even if he can see anything in it anymore. Demyx rather thinks he doesn't, but knows that Zexion will sit up nights and eat far more of the stuff than is healthy, or would be if it mattered. Demyx thinks he knows why, but doesn't like to think of the lost soul sitting alone, chasing vainly after faded memories and grasping after sensations he no longer feels.

3. Wrath

They do not fight often, but when they do the storms are terrible. Zexion does not remember what Demyx has done; only that it irks him, and in this temperamental mood of no compassion and less restraint, it does not seem to matter. All that matters is this hot singing in his blood, this strange aliveness brought on by elemental anger. Zexion yells, and does not care what happens.

Demyx is a patient man, but even he has his limits. This tension has been building slowly, running long but running deep, and the time has come to explode. His voice is rising, tight and higher pitched with tension, but strong and rough and as unstoppable as the very tides he commands. Furry has replaced the liquid in his veins with water, icy and chill and horribly deadly. Words spill from his mouth with no control, and he relishes in the pure release of no more pretense.

Both are screaming in that moment. Never before have they been so much the same.

4. Sloth

It is easy to do nothing when nothing can be done.

Many days have slipped away like this; idle dreams in a whitewashed world, but Zexion cannot bring himself to care. There is no incentive to move, no reason to rise and fight gravity another moment. He lies listless on the bed, and tries to lose himself in dreams of a happier yesterday.

Demyx comes looking for him; the musician is not as easily lulled by the siren song of nothingness, though he too courts the shadow. There is no spring in his step, and his eyes are calm as he regards his lover motionless.

"Are you planning to move today?" he asks, as though the question has been asked and answered a thousand times in the comfort of these walls. Perhaps it has, though Zexion cannot bring himself to remember, to drag his mind through the dark halls of yesterdays into eternity.

"I don't think I am." I says finally, with an effort. "Would you care to join me?" He gestures lazy to the open side of the bed, a full-sized mattress far too large for his fragile frame. It's whiteness dwarfs him, reduces him to a shadow, and the motion is far less eloquent than it once would have been. Demyx regards him for a long moment with eyes that are far older than the years they claim.

"Why thank you." He says, only once the moment has stretched into an uncomfortable silence and the quiet has become oppressive rather than expectant. "I think I will." He falls with the grace of a downed tree, of the bird falling from the hunter's shot. The mattress barely creaks as it accepts his weight, and there are two shadows in the room of sourceless light.

5. Envy

They do not know what they have, he thinks in a moment of rare, perfect lucidity. Icy hatred, or the barest shadow of it, lends his thoughts a clarity that would be painful were it not a welcome change from the fog of non-feeling. They do not know what they have, he thinks again, watching the people on the street. Some look tired, some look sad, a couple are having a fight as they walk down the street—he would give the breath in his lungs, all the knowledge he ever gleaned, all the hope in the world for even that sharp breath of sorrow, for even a moment of rage. In that moment he can hate them, but even that is as cold and flat and meaningless as the hissing scrape of blades on winter ice.

They do not know what they have, he thinks, but unlike his lover speaks it sadly. They do not know—how much sweetness one can find, even at the root of sorrow; he wishes he could show them, so they at least could appreciate that life. He himself has been cold so long it scarcely matters now. But someday, he knows. Someday, he will be all that he was. He will face the world with a song in his heart and a smile on his lips. But his time is not now. Now it is their time, and he wishes with all the heart he might not even have that it was his.

6. Lust

It is a feeling, and that alone makes it worth everything they have, and a bit more besides. Heat rising slowly as lazy fingers trace patterns over skin, grey eyes bat coy lashes in an expression more than a little out of place on such somber features. Blue eyes normally open and honest are shaded dark with desire, half-closed with a lazy sort of lust that plays dark arpeggios up and down his spine.

The room is dark, the sourceless light extinguished in favor of a fast-burning candle; it's flame casts sharp shadows as they too burn, friction and heat and despair drawing them ever closer in a dark, meaningless dance. Zexion bites sharply; Demyx prefers to trace hieroglyph designs with his tongue. Then they are panting and moving together and so _close_ and riding towards some inconceivable _feeling_, and if they can just reach the top the spell will be broken and both princes, awake!

In a moment all is fire and sweet honey and bitter hemlock, and heaven and hell are only words like pain and pleasure and _Zexion_ and _Demyx_, and words don't matter because there is no difference.

7. Pride

He should not feel so satisfied, he knows. He should not feel at all, if his own theories are correct and his lover's only the smoke and mirrors he has oft claimed them to be. At the moment, however, Zexion is feeling far too content to worry about trifles.

Demyx is not quite sleeping, a small smile on his lips and a faint smudge of shadows under his eyes. He drifts in the world of the half-waking, warm and content to not reach to quickly towards a reality he knows to be pleasant, and all his own doing. He knows that when he must swim up from the depths of half-slumber, Zexion will be there, and Zexion will be _his_.

Zexion is admiring his sleeping lover. A mere diversion, perhaps, but a pleasant one. One so easy to claim, with sweet words that may have rung a tad too true to really be lies, but he isn't sure and doesn't care. A heady diversion, warm and strong and _alive_ in a way that he couldn't help but spread, and now Zexion is alive too and drunk on the heady exult ion of such a conquest.


End file.
